Imagine you’re in a movie theater when you hear that familiar movie trailer voice say, “In a world where data rules, what can happen when things go wrong?” The short answer: not much, if you exist in popular culture where the hero always saves the day and rides off on a wave of glory. But as virtually every IT professional would attest, wreaking havoc in a data center only serves for a good plot line in the movies.

In honor of World Backup Day on March 31, Arcserve is counting down the worst IT disasters and cyberattacks in pop culture with a list of our favorite BCDR fails. What would you do if you were caught in one of these scenarios?

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – In Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the main character Lisbeth is attacked by a group of thugs in the subway who break her laptop. Fortunately, she has a friend named Plague who can save her hard drive. But, the rest of us need to make sure we’re backing up our info somewhere else!

Jurassic Park – When the IT system at Jurassic Park failed, dinosaurs wreaked havoc on visitors. Imagine if business continuity is what kept dinosaurs from taking over your office? When the security systems went down at Jurassic Park, no one was safe! Maybe they should have read our disaster recovery eBook?

WestWorld – This futuristic theme park relies on the continuous availability of data. So, when Dolores decided to start messing with their systems, she caused quite a bit of trouble. We bet they wish they had better business continuity plans when Dolores and her cohort of robots hacked into the system and took over.

Grey’s Anatomy – In the season 9 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital experienced power outages during an intense super storm. Despite this, hospital operations needed to stay up and running. Maybe things would have been a bit easier if they had Arcserve Business Continuity Cloud?

Independence Day – This classic film features a plot where aliens showed up on Earth’s doorstep to invade and destroy. However, if this happened, we’re confident most IT pros would be more concerned about getting out alive rather than recovering data! Nevertheless, it’s best to be prepared and make sure you test your DR plans often in the event of an alien sighting.

Fight Club – The “underground” club in this film may start out as a support group, but quickly turns into a platform for recruiting members to participate in elaborate pranks on corporate America. One of these pranks centers on erasing everyone’s credit card debt by destroying the building where the information is stored. Could this scenario really play out in “real life?” If data isn’t backed up, it’s possible!

Toy Story 2 – Did you know that Toy Story 2 was once accidentally deleted from Pixar’s servers, erasing two months and hundreds of hours of work? It was only recovered by a stroke of luck and intense efforts from the company’s staff. Whew! We’re sure kids around the world are thankful.

Hackers – This movie from 1995 is about an 11-year-old who wrote a virus and caused the “biggest crash in history,” which made the New York Stock Exchange drop seven points and got him legally banned from using a computer or phone until he turned 18. From there, he joins a series of hacker squads which not only taught us that it was important to wear sunglasses while executing malicious code, but also showed IT pros in the 90s how important it was (and still is) to keep data protected.

Weird Science – This film features two teens who hack into a government computer system to draw more power in their quest to create the perfect women. We know the public sector has a reputation of lagging in cybersecurity, but this seems a bit extreme – and we’ve pretty much seen it all.

TRON – In TRON, a computer hacker was abducted into a digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games. His only chance of winning was with the help of a heroic security program. Can you imagine a world where your only chance for survival was to work hand in hand with a cybersecurity program? That’s exactly what happens in TRON, and what happens to IT pros every day!

Skyfall – In this Bond movie, cyberterrorists attack the MI-6 headquarters and Bond comes out of retirement to track them down. How nice of him, right? In the real world, our IT pros are the real heroes who stop cybercriminals from executing data attacks.

Live Free or Die Hard – When a tech-savvy villain launches an attack on America’s corporate infrastructure, only Bruce Willis and Justin Long can stop him from bringing down the country’s critical infrastructure. Today, however, McClane’s old-school methods might not be enough to assure business continuity.

Each of these examples illustrate the power and importance of data – both on and off the big screen. Backup is no longer optional, and disaster recovery is no longer a “nice to have.” Get real-world tips on how you can protect your critical business data in our eBook, Smart Strategies for Business Continuity: An IT Survival Guide.

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